Hunter bailey

Artist Statement

I am drawn to decaying manmade objects, particularly vehicles, machinery, and other utilitarian forms. On the surface, this interest comes from a desire to find beauty in the mundane and to slow down how we look at objects designed for use rather than contemplation. Over time, I have come to understand this attraction as something deeper. These objects, especially as they fall apart or slip out of use, reflect a quiet conviction that the systems we have built are failing, and that our current way of being cannot persist unchanged.

Much of this work centers on trucks and rigs from the 1990s and early 2000s, which I see as marking the end of a period when mechanical knowledge was still accessible. These machines carry the memory of self-reliance, when someone with a basic understanding of mechanics could work on their own vehicle using shared knowledge and readily available parts. As technology becomes more complex and opaque, skills that were once learned and embodied are increasingly outsourced to systems we cannot see or repair. What was sold as freedom gradually produces dependence, and with it, a subtle sense of loss around forms of agency that no longer have a place to live.

While these images can read as cynical or nihilistic, that is only one layer of what they hold. Decay does not only signal failure. It also reveals the fact that these systems were made by people, and that what has been built can be dismantled, altered, or remade. Within breakdown and obsolescence, I locate a quieter optimism. The objects in my paintings sit at the threshold between usefulness and abandonment, loss and possibility. They ask viewers to consider not only what is ending, but what might still be built in its place.